Hello,

I just purchased and received a GE gear motor and when it arrived, a capacitor was supplied. They failed to send instruction on how to wire the unit up. It is a 115 vac motor and has 3 wires (black, yellow and red) The small diagram for wiring on the web site shows Black to L1 Yellow to L2 (confusing because its 110 volt) and the red wire connected to capacitor, but also connected to yellow. I am a little worried about just arbitralily applying power with some direction. Any help would be appreciated.

Will

Give me some info on the HP or FLA rating for the motor and I can give you some ideas for safely powering up the motor.

The cap connections would seem right.

L1 and L2 generally mean line 1 and Line 2 for motors, this is less of a significance than L and N.

Red and Black would generally signify a 240 V load, but then again wire colors for motors are not standard. Terminal designations usually are.

Based on the information you provided, your supply voltage connects to black and yellow, and the capacitor connects to red and yellow.

Perhaps KISS can give you more details if you provide the information he requests.

Give me some info on the HP or FLA rating for the motor and I can give you some ideas for safely powering up the motor.

The cap connections would seem right.

L1 and L2 generally mean line 1 nd Line 2 for motors, this is less of a significance than L and N.

Red and Black would generally signify a 240 V load, but then again wire colors for motors are not standard. Terminal designations usually are.

Unfortunately the info plate is scratched up, but they list it as a 2.1 amp. It is a gear motor and I only know the output shaft rpm as 86. Because the cap has no designation for + or -, it must not matter which side you hook to? Would power flow through the motor then to the cap or vise versa?

The cap is not polarized it can connect either way.

It is a PSC motor, it has two coils. One coil has power applied directly, the other coil has power applied through the capacitor.

Does that make the third wire the neutral?

Yellow is neutral in this case.

Power passes through motor on black to capacitor? I enlarged the poor schematic they provided on line and it shows the red and yellow attached to cap, with the yellow also going to L2 with the black going to L1. Do I apply power to the black and yellow to neutral and cap and red just to the other side of cap?

I pulled the trigger and got it working! Thank you all for your help.